Tag Archives: depression

Did DWP torture this disabled benefit claimant until he died?

There are many kinds of torture – not just physical but also psychological.

This Writer has to ask whether the Department for Work and Pensions used psychological torture on a disabled benefit claimant by its own failures to carry out its duties properly.

DWP officers had left the claimant to be supported by an elderly, disabled parent – his appointee – who also needed daily carers and meals delivered.

Departmental guidance states that they should have found another appointee – but they did not do so. Why not?

Instead, the claimant’s ESA and PIP were repeatedly stopped due to failure to attend assessments, because letters were sometimes sent to the claimant’s address and sometimes to his parent’s.

The benefits were restarted after interventions – but the DWP has apparently lost the evidence showing why the claims had been restarted.

There are supposed to be safeguarding procedures to protect vulnerable benefit claimants but – as we discovered after the death of Jodey Whiting – nothing has been done to encourage officers to follow them.

In this case, the DWP repeatedly failed to follow its own safeguarding procedures, despite the fact that officers knew the claimant was vulnerable.

In addition to physical health problems, this claimant had severe depression. At one point, a sibling contacted the DWP to say that the claimant’s GP had sent them for psychiatric assessment due to a deterioration in their mental health.

The sibling explained that they had been to the claimant’s house and found unopened post and said they weren’t fit for a PIP assessment, but another such interview was arranged – by letter.

The result was predictable: the claimant didn’t answer the door and their PIP was stopped. The same also happened in relation to their ESA claim.

The claimant died – underweight, “unkempt and dirty” – after having been denied ESA for three months and PIP for three weeks.

His parent had been providing cash for food, even though that person had their own care package, meals prepared and carers attending daily.

The claimant’s sibling complained to the DWP and the government department made a payment of ESA arrears and £3,000 of backdated PIP.

Unsatisfied, the sibling took the matter to the Independent Case Examiner, who ruled that a further payment of £10,700 in PIP be paid to the claimant’s estate and a consolatory payment of £2,500 to the family.

And a fat lot of good it dead the deceased man!

But think how much the DWP saved; one-off payments totalling £16,200 – which included arrears, remember – is much less than might have been handed out if the claimant had remained alive.

So I have to ask: did DWP officers deliberately push this claimant to death?

They knew he suffered from severe depression but chose to mess him around.

Brown envelope phobia is a known phenomenon in which depressed people avoid opening letters from the DWP – so they sent him letters that they knew he would never read.

They deliberately failed to find a new appointee, and sent important notifications to the claimant’s former appointee – knowing that he would not be able to read them.

Another known behaviour of depressed benefit claimants is aversion to confrontations with DWP-appointed benefits assessors; they believe (justifiably, as many documented cases show) that they’ll be cheated out of payments.

But these DWP officers still sent an assessor to this claimant’s address anyway. Is it really credible for them to say they did not expect what happened?

Or were they deliberately inflicting psychological torture on a man with severe – mark that: severe – mental health problems?

To This Writer, the evidence is clear: the problem at the DWP is systemic – people there are encouraged to ignore their duty of care to claimants.

But with the Court of Appeal refusing to allow another inquest in the case of Jodey Whiting, it seems impossible to bring the evidence needed to prove it into the light of day.

Is the whole of the UK’s benefit and legal system rigged to push vulnerable people to their deaths and then hide the facts, simply because they happen to be sick and/or have a disability?

Source: Disabled claimant died underweight, ‘unkempt and dirty’ after ESA and PIP wrongly stopped | Disability Rights UK

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Rishi Sunak is trying to create another Great Depression. Here are his (bad) reasons

Tweedledum and Tweedledumber: Rishi Sunak wants to cut Covid-19-related spending before the pandemic is over. He’ll cause another huge recession – and more deaths – and Boris Johnson will let it happen because he is too stupid, or too greedy, to care about the harm it will do.

This is worrying from Richard Murphy at Tax Research UK.

He reckons Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak is either so stupid that he wants to kill off even more of us with Covid-19 for the sake of a few extra coppers in cash…

… or he’s so stupid that he thinks the economy will get a huge boost if he puts it into another disastrous recession – possibly even a depression (which is worse).

All the noises Sunak is making at the moment are about stopping Covid-19-related government spending – indicating that he’s putting the Treasury into “full austerity mode”, as Mr Murphy puts it.

He wasn’t calling for a relaxation of Covid-related travel regulations because he thinks the pandemic is over – it clearly isn’t. But he’s indicating that he thinks he is because he wants to stop spending money on it…

… even though all the money he spent on it was specifically created for that purpose and hasn’t done any harm at all as it has washed through the country.

What a strange man.

Mr Murphy continues:

Sunak wants furlough to end, even though he knows this will significantly increase unemployment.

Sunak wants to cut universal credit even though his own backbenchers are indicating this will result in very real hardship in the UK.

Spending cuts are to be demanded.

He goes on to say that this is about maintaining ‘The Treasury View’ as put forward by Winston Churchill in 1929 – a false argument that there is only a limited amount of money and if the state uses any of it, then investment – and growth – by the private sector cannot take place.

It is a completely false view to take:

Churchill spoke when we were on the gold standard. But now we have a fiat currency, and the only constraint on the money supply is full employment at a living wage, which we are very far from achieving.

What is more, there is not a shred of evidence that there is any shortage of capital available to business right now. All business is absent of is ideas.

And to suggest the state does not add value in this era is an insult.

Churchill was economically incompetent.

His decision to follow ‘The Treasury View’ drove the UK into the Great Depression of the early 1930s.

Now Sunak wants his own great recession, whether working for Johnson or in his own account, given that his ambitions are so obvious.

And it seems clear that Boris Johnson is going to do everything he can to help. Already travel restrictions are being lifted.

Not only will the economy bomb, but Tweedledum and Tweedledumber are literally inviting more Covid-19 variants through the UK’s front door, and thousands upon thousands of us may suffer and die as a result.

Source: The UK cannot afford Sunak: he is a massive threat to our well-being

Has Boris Johnson manufactured a way to blame poor people for catching Covid-19?

Money: Tories use it to force people into actions they would not otherwise take – like going to work after being told to self-isolate due to a risk that they have Covid-19, because otherwise they could not afford to feed their families.

This is absolutely despicable:

A “perfect storm” of low wages, cramped housing and failures of the £22bn test-and-trace scheme has led to “stubbornly high” coronavirus rates in England’s most deprived communities, an unpublished government report has found.

A classified analysis by the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC), produced last month, concluded that “unmet financial needs” meant people in poorer areas were less likely to be able to self-isolate because they could not afford to lose income.

In two of the UK’s worst-hit areas, Blackburn-with-Darwen and Leicester, the study found that more people seeking financial help to self-isolate had been rejected than accepted. It said: “This could increase the likelihood for individuals to be unable to comply with self-isolation requirements as a result of their unmet needs.”

The report, marked “Official Sensitive”, and seen by the Guardian, will pile pressure on ministers to improve government support for the millions of people who do not currently qualify when they are ordered by law to quarantine at home. Dido Harding, the head of NHS test and trace, has estimated that at least 20,000 people a day are not complying fully with isolation orders, allowing the virus to spread.

So: people are on lower incomes because Tory policies have pushed wages down.

Now, when they desperately need government help to bridge the gap between their earnings (or 80 per cent of them if these people are on the furlough scheme) and their needs, they find the government has turned its collective back.

(It seems it has far too many crony companies to subsidise, in return for no service at all; Dido Harding, mentioned in the Guardian article, knows all about that.)

So they find they can’t comply with orders to self-isolate; in order to feed themselves and their children, they have to keep going to work.

Then they return home, where poverty means they have to live in homes that are too small for the number of people in their families, and – if they’ve contracted the virus – they pass it on very easily.

It is a complication of the Covid crisis that has been created entirely by Conservative governments.

No wonder they haven’t published the damning report.

Of course, without the fairly essential piece of knowledge that wages have been pushed down by the Tories, this story could be damning against the poor victims instead.

I’m sure you can picture the headlines in the yellow press (The Mail, The Express, The Sun): Greedy grafters ignore experts to spread killer Covid or some such twaddle.

The report remains unpublished at the time of writing (to the best of my knowledge) so I don’t think for a moment that Boris Johnson and his ghouls will feel any need to improve government support for people who are told to self-isolate.

It’ll be interesting to see whether they try to condemn the people they have impoverished, though.

Source: England’s poorest areas hit by Covid ‘perfect storm’ – leaked report | World news | The Guardian

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If Tories don’t support abusers, why does Universal Credit push people to stay in abusive relationships?

Abuse: the Tories have ensured that people can’t escape if it means claiming Universal Credit. That way lie only debt, depression and mental breakdown.

Twisted Tory rules mean that people are financially encouraged to stay in abusive relationships rather than claim Universal Credit.

The Conservative government has deliberately weighted the conditions under which the so-called benefit is paid to make it more difficult for people to survive by claiming it than by living with an abuser – even if this means endangering their own lives.

People with disabilities are particularly at risk. But then, those of us who are familiar with the Tory record on disability have come to expect that.

Unite the Union has provided the story of Emma (not her real name), who lived a life of psychological abuse, control and marital rape until she was helped to divorce her husband and strike out on her own.

She did not think there would be any hardship as her husband, it seems, was a genuine skiver who refused to work, meaning she had been the main earner – despite being able to work only 24 hours per week, due to a serious autoimmune disease.

But the Tories made sure she would suffer.

Previously, as a working person, she had been receiving tax credits, and would have been better-off had she continued to do so.

But the Tories used her change of circumstances to force her onto Universal Credit, leaving her £350 per month worse-off.

There are several reasons for this:

The disabled worker allowance she used to receive under tax credits was stopped. This is because the allowance can only be accessed through a work capability assessment, which grants benefits to people unable to work, rather than for disabled people who can work.

The Citizens Advice Bureau has stated that this has resulted in a Catch 22 where “a worker must be assessed as not fit for work to receive targeted in-work support”.

Have you ever heard of anything as flat-out daft?

I bet if anyone tried to point it out, they’d have to fight an expensive court case before the Tories did anything about it, too.

Worse still, Emma ran into a problem that has now been challenged in court, with a ruling made against it:

Her wages are paid on the last Wednesday of every month rather than on the same date. This resulted in her claim being cancelled and her payments being stopped for three months. She was also ineligible to claim her entitlement back for the month in which the claim was ended.

This is a widely experienced problem for Universal Credit claimants whose regular wages are paid on different days each month and stems from an ill-considered policy stipulation that the benefit amount is calculated to a strictly defined time period.

Now Emma is among 85,000 people who should be able to claim compensation, after the Court of Appeal have ruled that it was “irrational” for the Department for Work and Pensions – and the Secretary of State in particular – to ignore the fact that computer systems would assume that claimant had received double the money expected and cancel their payments.

The Conservative government spent two years fighting this court case – indicating that, despite being well aware of the issue, Tories were determined to continue depriving some of the poorest workers in the UK of vital benefits – including victims of outrageous domestic abuse like Emma.

I asked in my previous article about the court case whether the Tories were sadists or perverts, commenting that “perverts” seemed closest to the mark as one of the judges had described the situation as “perverse”.

Considering Emma’s case, it seems they were sadists as well.

The court ruling came too late for her, by the way – forced into an ever-mounting debt crisis with not even an offer of support from the Department for Work and Pensions, the weight of a life suffering abuse came crashing over her and she suffered a nervous breakdown.

She is now diagnosed as suffering with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression.

After 22 years as a healthcare professional in which she had always paid her bills, taxes and pension contributions, she now says she is “mortgaged up to the hilt… living off a credit card and have taken out two personal loans”.

So Universal Credit has put Emma exactly where the Tories want her – deeply in debt and forced to work like a beast of burden in the forlorn hope of clearing that debt again.

Consider the fact that 85,000 people are likely to have been put in the same situation by the ‘pay date’ scandal alone – never mind those who lost the disabled worker allowance, and it seems clear that the Tories are trying to create a “zombie economy” – with working people forced to wear themselves out trying to pay off an impossibly-high debt while their creditors sit back and count their profits.

It seems a limited amount of help is available for people who have suffered domestic abuse – but anyone seeking it must provide “written evidence” (of what kind?) within one month of discussing it with a work coach.

Emma is clear about the end result:

“Had I known that I would lose my tax credits and be transferred to Universal Credit before I separated from my ex-husband, I most definitely would have remained in the marriage and that is a worrying thought.

“Universal Credit, I believe, traps people in unhealthy relationships and causes more difficulties to individuals who are already in a vulnerable and distressing situation.”

So much for Iain Duncan Smith’s brainchild.

The only way for vulnerable people like Emma to avoid its debt trap is to go back into domestic degradation and abuse.

And the only conclusion we can draw is that Conservative politicians have designed the system to achieve this.

So it would be fair to say the Conservative government – and every MP who is a member of it – in league with the worst kind of physical, psychological and sexual abusers.

If they try to deny it, let them explain why they designed Universal Credit that way – and why they fight court cases to keep it that way.

Source: Domestic abuse survivor speaks out about Universal Credit nightmare

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Benefit sanctions achieve little more than increasing anxiety and depression – LSE

Benefit sanctions lead to increases in claimants’ anxiety and depression, and a re-assessment of the role of sanctions is needed as the UK slowly emerges from lockdown – according to the London School of Economics.

According to a recent assessment, current sanctions policy can be considered to be ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading’. Importantly, there are straightforward steps that can be implemented to minimise the harms associated with sanctions and to help realise the basic right to a social minimum.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) should … assess the impacts of sanctions on health and well-being. Mental health and labour market outcomes are likely to be interrelated; the adverse mental health impacts of sanctions could plausibly affect people’s ability to search for and attain paid work.

There is a need to reduce the length of sanctions and/or the proportion of benefit that is withdrawn… Sanctions are consecutive within Universal Credit, which means that some will be affected by penalties that last longer than the new apparent maximum of 26 weeks.

The hardship payments system is insufficient and also needs to be reformed… Adverse mental health impacts … are observed even though the rate of hardship payments [has] increased. Hardship payments within Universal Credit are awarded for a restricted set of reasons and are repayable, leading to even fewer claimants receiving them than in the past.

The application of sanctions should be limited to a last resort. Initially, Universal Credit operated with a very high rate of sanctions, though this has since been reduced. The low rate could be maintained by implementing a warning system; limiting the number of reasons for which sanctions apply; and establishing clear rules for what constitutes a ‘good reason’ for non-compliance.

Source: The impact of DWP benefit sanctions on anxiety and depression | British Politics and Policy at LSE

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Mental health crisis for autistic man as DWP stops his disability benefits

A man had to be referred to a mental health crisis team after the Department for Work and Pensions stopped his disability benefit.

Aaron Calver, 29, is on the autism spectrum and has Asperger’s syndrome, Tourette’s syndrome, ADHD, anxiety and depression. He struggles to cope with everyday tasks and has received disability benefits since he was 15.

But that did not stop the DWP from calling him to an assessment of his right to receive Personal Independence Payment, and then cancelling it.

It seems he was told he was able to work and should be doing so – but it also seems the assessor did not check his ability to manage this.

His mother Hazel said she tried to explain the realities of Aaron’s life, but the assessor would not listen and put her down.

She said the decision had  affected Aaron deeply. He was not sleeping properly, had to be referred to the mental health crisis team and the doctor had increased his medication.

She said she felt he was being punished because of the way he was born.

Including the loss of her Carers’ Allowance, the family is now £700 a month worse off.

The DWP has said they can ask for a review of the ruling, and in the meantime they still have Aaron’s Employment and Support Allowance which, at £500/month, leaves them with less than half what they formerly had to support themselves.

Complaints against assessments have skyrocketed from 142 in 2015-16 to 9,320 in the year to February 2019. Anybody unhappy with a review can then appeal – and nearly three-quarters of these (73 per cent) are successful.

For This Writer, the claim that Mr Calver was being punished because of what he is – the way he was born – has deeply sinister overtones.

I have suggested for many years that the DWP has been implementing a Tory-run programme aiming to eliminate people with serious disabilities from society.

They simply find any excuse to cut these people off from the benefit system, forcing them into poverty and despair.

The end result – as we have seen in many cases over the last few years – is that, if their disabilities or failing health due to the forced imposition of poverty don’t kill them, they may end up taking their own lives due to despair.

The attitude seems to be that people, who are unable to work for the pittance the Conservative Party calls a living wage, are “useless eaters”, as described by the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

And just as the Nazis believed, it seems the Tories think the UK would be better-off if those people were cut off from society and the support it offers.

The only difference is that the Nazis went to the lengths of killing these people themselves; the Tories do it indirectly by benefit denial.

Now the Tories are seeking re-election for another five-year Parliamentary term, in order to continue causing this suffering and death – and possibly to extend it to other families.

Your family, perhaps.

Are you really willing to risk that? Would you use your vote to support this barbarity?

Source: Greenstead mum hits out at DWP as son’s disability benefits stopped | Gazette

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Here is another death to add to the DWP’s body count

Amy Nice.

Does anybody remember a song by The Police called Murder By Numbers? One of the verses went like this:

You can reach the top of your profession
If you become the leader of the land
For murder is the sport of the elected
You don’t need to lift a finger of your hand.

That certainly rings true in the case of Amy Nice, who took her own life because she feared that her Universal Credit would be sanctioned away from her because pen-pushers at the Department for Work and Pensions might think she wasn’t doing enough to find work.

This is a young woman with kidney disease and attendant severe depression and anxiety. She should have been classified as having a long-term illness – and eventually was, but too late to do any good. DWP assessors had pressurised her into an early grave.

Ms Nice’s terror of losing benefits was due to the ratcheting-up of the sanctions regime at the DWP. On Twitter today, I learned a little about how that had happened. It seems the Liberal Democrats had agreed to it while in coalition government with the Conservatives in 2014 – in return for agreement to place a 5p tax on plastic bags at shops. Here’s Polly Mackenzie:

The Liberal Democrats had no qualms about increasing the threat to the lives of benefit claimants; they wanted a boost for their environmental credentials in time for their party conference – and nobody had to know about their grotty little deal.

Well, now we do.

It is because of this deal that people like Ms Nice have been going to their deaths with a regularity that makes the government that has been in place since 2010 one of the worst-ever killers of its own citizens. Thousands have died.

But nobody in power will ever admit responsibility; they’ll say these people took their own lives. And the reasons for suicide are complicated.

Coroner James Newman doesn’t seem to think so. He made it perfectly clear that Ms Nice took her life because she was “under pressure from the Department for Work and Pensions” and accepted that this “would play massively on a young woman’s mind with a young child and history of physical and mental illness.”

Read the story for yourself:

“A struggling young mum took her own life after she feared losing her benefits under the Government’s Universal Credit scheme, an inquest heard.

“Amy Nice, 21, had been suffering from severe depression and anxiety following a diagnosis for kidney disease but had felt ‘pressurised’ to find work under new rules for claimants.

“On October 24 last year, after months of financial worry, Amy wrote a suicide note saying she ‘couldn’t see a way forward’, dropped off her young son at school then hanged herself in woodland near her home in the village of Coppull near Chorley, Lancashire.

“At an inquest into her death, a coroner ruled the tragedy as suicide saying the risk of losing benefits would ‘play massively on a young woman’s mind with a young child and history of illness’.

“Coroner James Newman said: “She was under pressure from the Department for Work and Pensions – a source of income she relied on. The pressure was to get back to work or be able to prove she was searching for work.

“”In a person with her mental history I could understand that would be difficult. There is pressure that she could run the risk of losing her benefits and I can see that financial matters would play massively on a young woman’s mind with a young child and history of physical and mental illness.””

To the DWP and its lower-than-vermin minister Esther McVey, this means nothing.

She’d probably say the Department’s cruel threat of sanctions had “assisted” Ms Nice into a place where she could be happier. I refer, of course, to the grave.

And they will never – ever – consciously accept responsibility, even though it is plain for all to see that this woman died under threat from the DWP, which was acting on the orders of the Conservative government.

The ever-increasing ranks of the deceased are a demand for justice.

When will they get it?

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Council to kick man out of housing because he isn’t ill enough – despite multiple conditions

David Bone may not be ill enough under Lewisham Council guidelines, but the officials’ decision is making him want to be dead. Is that the intention?

Who devises the regulations that dictate whether a person’s physical illnesses are enough to justify assisted housing? What are their qualifications and what criteria do they use?

Or is it just an arbitrary decision?

Be honest – the latter seems more likely.

A man with a lung disease said he is suicidal at the prospect of becoming homeless after the council decided he is ‘not in priority need’ for housing.

Lewisham Council decided to ‘terminate’ David Bone’s place at its hostel in Sydenham Hill because he doesn’t meet the appropriate legal definition of ‘physical or mental impairment’ needed to be listed as in priority need for homing by the council.

Mr Bone previously lived in a van for 10 months after he got divorced. He was given a space in the hostel six months ago and said he will now have to move out on October 26.

The council said he has the option to request a review of its decision.

Mr Bone suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – a lung disease that causes breathing difficulties – and has arthritis in both knees, his lower back and his left shoulder. He has Atrial Fibrillation – a heart condition that gives him an irregular heartbeat – and suffers from depression, for which he has been sent for counselling by his GP.

He has been given a disabled blue badge by Lewisham Council that expires next July and he also receives Disability Living Allowance.

The 64-year-old said if he is moved out on October 26, he will sleep rough in his van.Coun

Source: Man ‘suicidal’ over being homeless after Lewisham Council decision | News Shopper

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‘Brown Envelope Day’ – and the horror it holds for sick and disabled people

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign]

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign]

Look at the blood pressure reading and pulse count mentioned in Julia Smith’s Facebook comment (copied below). Does that really tally with the claim by Damian Green and the DWP to be “helping” people? Really?

Of course it does not.

The Work Capability Assessment and everything associated with it is inimical to health – inherently harmful, as anybody who has even witnessed one will know.

It is carried out, not by a “medical professional”, as the Department for Work and Pensions is still – pathetically – trying to claim, but by the employee of a private company hired to reduce the number of people claiming benefits. They have a multiple choice test on their computers; their questions demand simple yes/no answers that are intended to hide the nature of a person’s condition rather than explain it; and their intention is to deny that real conditions exist.

This is just one of the reasons the United Nations has condemned the UK for systematic violations of the human rights of sick and disabled people.

Oh, and a new wave of them seems to have been sent out to do their worst just before Christmas, in what can only be seen as a campaign of demoralisation against the vulnerable. As This Blog has explained, Christmas is a very unhappy time of year for many people – particularly those who have few friends and family around them, possibly because of an illness. Deprivation of benefit, and the few luxuries it may provide, might just push people over the cliff edge Ms Smith mentions. Damian Green knows this very well.

That is why Ms Smith is in despair.

That is why she is saying her Christmas is ruined; she must fight this latest attempt to force her into destitution. How would you feel, if it was you?

And yet people keep voting Conservative, in order to allow this torture to continue.

They might make alternative claims – “The Tories are the only ones who can be trusted with the economy” (not true, for reasons that have been trotted out many times over the last couple of days, the gist being that they have deliberately harmed the UK’s industrial base and increased the national debt) or “Labour can’t be trusted” (Heaven forbid that those horrible socialists should come along and actually help the people of the UK) – but they know that the torture is taking place.

Therefore, by passing their vote for the Conservatives, they know that they are supporting the torture of the sick, disabled and vulnerable.

Fortunately, Ms Smith is not alone. There is a large support network available to her, should she fall foul of the system, and the long-term effect on her may – and I stress that it is only a possibility – be minimised.

But in the short term her life is disrupted, her plans for Christmas are thrown into chaos, and her mental and physical health are threatened.

All while millions of people protest helplessness, in full knowledge of the fact that they could stop it at once, if they only had the will.

OH….MY….GOODNESS !!

Never mind ‘Black Friday’… this is definitely ‘Black Wednesday’ for me.

IT’S BROWN ENVELOPE DAY. Only my fellow disabled friends will truly understand the chilling significance of that.

It means I face yet another corrupt assessment.

It means that once again I am in despair.

It means Christmas is ruined.

I feel like I can’t cope, but somehow I will have to.

I refuse to just lay down and die like the Tories want me to.

My blood pressure is 190/125 and my pulse is racing at 110 per min, but at least I get to see the heart specialist on Monday.

This needs saying…for all you people who keep voting Conservative, you are voting for me and my disabled friends to be continually bullied, abused, harassed, criminalised, our human rights deliberately violated and our already challenging lives destroyed. The stress from this oppression is unbearable.

They are pushing hundreds of thousands of us off the cliff.

I am considering publishing a page with links to organisations that provide support for people who face continual interference from the Department for Work and Pensions. If you are a member or organiser of such a group and you wish to be listed, please send me details of your organisation and how it may be contacted by a member of the public, via the form below. THIS IS NOT A COMMENT FORM, SO PLEASE DO NOT USE IT TO COMMENT ON THE ARTICLE!

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Unrepentant IDS will persecute the sick no matter what the death statistics say

ids-auschwitz-meme

The publication of the DWP’s damped-down death statistics (we’ll be given ratios because the actual number of deaths is too inflammatory, we’re told) will be a victory for those of us who have campaigned for the facts, no matter what they actually say.

If you didn’t know already, the DWP only announced that it would publish these figures on Thursday (August 27) after This Writer supplied his submission to the Information Tribunal on the DWP’s appeal against providing the actual numbers – a submission which included a request to have the appeal struck out on the grounds that it is an abuse of process.

Suddenly the date of publication went from being “before the end of autumn” (according to Priti Patel) to August 27. Clearly the DWP was terrified that it would lose control of events and the public would get accurate information, and acted accordingly.

In short: IDS and his department fell apart like a paper bag in a thunderstorm.

It is impossible to say what the statistics will reveal, when they are finally published (at 9.30am on Thursday, it seems). Perhaps they will provide exhaustive information on the deaths that have taken place, broken down into the groups requested by This Writer and others (it is said to be in response to FoI requests), and also providing information on the causes of the deaths, with appendices containing the raw data used to produce the report.

Alternatively, we could get a dumbed-down piece of fluff that provides as little as possible that can be used to find out the extent of the carnage, but can be waved at us by Iain Duncan Smith as evidence that he has given us what we wanted… and as evidence that any figures demanded by the Information Tribunal are of little consequence.

That is the aim – damage limitation. To make it seem that nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Plausible deniability.

The DWP already believes it has plausible deniability for every dodgy death on its books; no DWP representative can be said to be directly responsible for any of the deaths – they were a consequence of claimants’ illnesses, right? Even the suicides can be claimed as indicative of claimants’ poor mental health – except we know that anyone confessing suicidal thoughts at a work capability assessment is immediately asked why they haven’t already killed themselves.

Not conclusive? Maybe not. But then, that isn’t the only evidence available. It’s all part of a bigger picture.

In December last year, This Blog published a series of articles (here’s one) explaining how the DWP’s behaviour may be equated with the Nazi ‘chequebook euthanasia’ programme that eventually became known as Aktion T4 – a programme that caused the deaths of 70,000 German people with (among other problems) mental illnesses, before its methods were used against entire races the Nazis considered undesirable, in the extermination camps.

“It could be argued that the Coalition Government doesn’t have any blood on its hands. Nobody goes around the United Kingdom subjecting the sick and disabled to so-called ‘mercy’ killings, after all,” I wrote.

“They just subject people – who are already in an unstable frame of mind – to a highly pressurised ‘fitness’ test and then demand to know why, considering their condition, they haven’t killed themselves yet. Then they let those people do all the work themselves.”

On Thursday, it’s just possible that we might find out how successful they’ve been. If there have been more than 70,273 deaths in the last few years, the Conservative Party will have beaten the Nazis.

And Iain Duncan Smith intends to continue. Only this week, he announced a new plan to purge the Employment and Support Allowance benefit bill of mentally ill claimants. He told us “Work is good for your health”.

In fact, if you have a mental illness, work can drive you to an early death via a combination of (among others) stress, anxiety, depression and paranoia.

Duncan Smith’s claim that “Work is good for your health” may therefore be seen as a lie – almost as great a lie as the slogan from which it was adapted.

You’ll be familiar with it: “Work makes you free” – it hangs in its more familiar form of “Arbeit macht frei” over the gates of the Auschwitz extermination camp that Duncan Smith visited in 2009.

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